Dodgers-Diamondbacks rivalry going too far

Sorry, but I’m not buying what Ian Kennedy is selling.
He might not have been trying to plunk Dodgers rookie Yasiel Puig on the end of the nose with his high, tight 92-mile-per-hour fastball Tuesday night at Dodgers Stadium, but I find it hard to believe he didn’t intend to hit him at all.
Or at least to deliver a message by throwing way inside.
And there is even less doubt about whether he was going after Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke, who had just thrown at Diamondbacks catcher Miquel Montero in retaliation for the Puig pitch.
The Dodgers clearly don’t believe it, which is why the game – won by LA – turned ugly. Perhaps they remembered Kennedy throwing inside against their ace, Clayton Kershaw, last season.
That was in response, presumably, to the Dodgers taking offense to Gerardo Parra the season prior when they thought he did a bit too much preening after a home run. Kershaw plunked him the next day.
Funny that earlier Tuesday in a conversation with Diamondbacks president/CEO Derrick Hall about Puig, I mentioned Parra’s terrific throw in the opener of the series that got Puig at third base.
“Parra always steps up against the Dodgers,” Hall noted. “There’s something about the Dodgers that brings something out of him. He stands a little taller, he puffs out his chest a little more.”
There’s something about the Dodgers that brings that out of all the Diamondbacks, which will make the remaining 11 games between the two teams even more interesting.
Nothing wrong with some heat in a rivalry, a little bad blood or even vigilante justice.
But the head-hunting has to stop.

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